Happy Thanksgiving, Take II

Today I made (more or less) a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for the family. We only had a turkey breast, because the butcher needs a 1 week notice to get a whole turkey, so there was no stuffing. We didn't have slices of cranberry sauce shaped like the can, either, but we did have mashed potatoes with gravy, candied yams, and green beans to go with our turkey. It turned out really well. Everyone was getting excited as it was cooking, because they could smell the ham that was cooking with the beans and the sugar from the yams. None of them had ever eaten sweet potatoes before, except maybe if they were served mashed, like potatoes, so they weren't too sure about that (especially Gunther). Esther in particular loved the yams. I wouldn't be surprised if they ask me to make them at Christmas. And Olaf experienced the true Thanksgiving tradition: eat too much turkey and pass out on the sofa. He was so deeply asleep that he didn't even wake up, or for that matter move, when Silke rubbed his cheek. I told them that was an American pastime, and they find that fact to be quite humorous.

After Gunther and Silke left, Esther and I started decorating. I hung some lights in my window and Esther bought these cute little wooden scenes with lights for the kids' rooms. My lights are adorable, too. They're those little paper starts that open up and tie around a light bulb, except there are 20 of them and they're really small. I got red ones to match my room, plus they were 10 Euro cheaper than the gold ones and far more interesting than white. So now I have my candles, my tiny, decorated Christmas tree, and lights in the window. I bought little mulitcolored lights, too, but I don't know what to do with them. The light chains here are all a closed loop, so you can't connect them together, and instead of being one long, single chain of lights, it's a short double chain. They don't really fit anywhere that they can sufficiently decorate anything, so I'm going to have to work on that.

After they took Amelie for a walk and were cleaning up the kitchen for dinner, Esther and Olaf let the kids sit at their little table and paint with their watercolors. Olaf was doing dishes, Esther was outside putting lights in the garden, and I was upstairs, so no one was really watching the kids very closely. Pretty soon, I hear Olaf and Pauline coming up the stairs to give Pauline a bath. Olaf told her to come say hi to me, and when she walked in the door her face was green. I started laughing and Olaf said, "You should see Gustav, he's even greener." Apparently while no one was looking, Gustav took a wet napkin, soaked it with green paint, and smeared it all over his face. Pauline, of course, followed suite. Gustav looked like the Hulk, and even after his bath his face was still green. I'm curious to see how green it is when he has to go to Kindergarten tomorrow morning.